Lots of blue screens - please help!

Hi,

I'm getting a lot of BSODs on my new laptop (only built a week ago).
It seems to be quite random, in that usually in the morning I will switch on the laptop, get a blue screen within 5 minutes, restart, have the same problem a few times - then, after maybe 5-6 blue screens, I'll be able to use the laptop fine for a few hours at least until I next shutdown.

Most of the blue screens (ones I can remember) are:
MEMORY_MANAGEMENT
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NON_PAGED_AREA

There are probably a few others I have forgotten. A couple of times it even crashed restarted without even giving me a BSOD!

--

At first I thought it may be a hardware fault, however I am running a dual boot (with Linux Ubuntu) and I can use ubuntu perfectly without any problems. For this reason, I think it must be a driver/software problem, but I need help pinpointing exactly what the cause is!

I ran the debugging program and you can find my Windows_NT6_BSOD_jcgriff2.zip attached.

I also tried to run the 'perfmon /report' , but got the following error:
"An error occured while attempting to generate the report.
The system cannot find the path specified."

Please help if you can, and let me know if I can provide any other helpful info.

Thanks!


More Information:
- x86 (32-bit) or x64 ?
x64
- the original installed OS on the system?
Yes
- an OEM or full retail version?
OEM

- What is the age of system (hardware)?
A week
- What is the age of OS installation (have you re-installed the OS?)
A week

Create a folder in c:\windows called minidump
Hopefully it'll start dropping the files where we need them.
There is no dump file in the attached only the system information.
Since the logs show just about every application possible crashing they aren't going to help narrow it down much.

Maguscreed said:

Create a folder in c:\windows called minidump
Hopefully it'll start dropping the files where we need them.
There is no dump file in the attached only the system information.
Since the logs show just about every application possible crashing they aren't going to help narrow it down much.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the fast reply -
That folder already exists (C:\Windows\Minidump) however it is empty.

Also (not sure if this helps) I just got another BSOD - MEMORY_MANAGEMENT whilst in Safe Mode With Networking just after I made my first post. Seemed to take longer than usual to crash (normally if I get a BSOD it's within a couple of mins of booting). First thing that happened was firefox crashed then about 10 seconds later I got the BSOD. Not sure if this helps narrow it down, but I guess it means it's not a gfx card driver problem since it doesn't run in safe mode!

The thing is the kind of errors you're seeing could mean a lot of things. I suppose without anything else to go on we can test the hardware.

Memory - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html
Hard drive - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

I would also remove any non-microsoft security or antivirus apps you may be running until we are done troubleshooting.

Maguscreed said:

Create a folder in c:\windows called minidump
Hopefully it'll start dropping the files where we need them.
There is no dump file in the attached only the system information.
Since the logs show just about every application possible crashing they aren't going to help narrow it down much.

Click to expand...

Maguscreed said:

The thing is the kind of errors you're seeing could mean a lot of things. I suppose without anything else to go on we can test the hardware.

Memory - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html
Hard drive - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

I would also remove any non-microsoft security or antivirus apps you may be running until we are done troubleshooting.

Click to expand...

Ok thanks I'll run these tests tonight, though if it were the hardware wouldn't Ubuntu be having problems too?

By the way, not sure if this is what you were looking for but a file called C:\Windows\MEMORY.dmp exists, and seems to contain info about the BSODs. Unfortunatly it's 370MB so I can't attach it here. Most of it is unreadable (NULL characters/binary) but there is some readable text scattered around the file which may help? There's a lot of error messages separated by NULL characters

actually ubuntu is not nearly as hard on the memory, and hard drive corruption could be limited to one partition or even just one file, so it's not really ruled out.

Maguscreed said:

actually ubuntu is not nearly as hard on the memory, and hard drive corruption could be limited to one partition or even just one file, so it's not really ruled out.

Click to expand...

Ok well I will run the checks.

I don't suppose anything from the MEMORY.dmp can help narrow it down?

Thanks again

Maguscreed said:

The thing is the kind of errors you're seeing could mean a lot of things. I suppose without anything else to go on we can test the hardware.

Memory - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105647-ram-test-memtest86.html
Hard drive - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

I would also remove any non-microsoft security or antivirus apps you may be running until we are done troubleshooting.

Click to expand...

Ok I've just run the disk check with auto correction and segment recovery options selected... there was only one error found (a corrupt readme.txt file it looks like?) - you can see the error in the photo here: http://i51.tinypic.com/s2cf41.jpg
The check completed after that and no other problems were found.

Also another strange thing just happened, I got a windows activation error saying that an 'unauthorized change' was made and I need to re-validate my copy of windows 7. I'll do that tomorrow since I don't have the win 7 disk with me at the moment, I don't suppose this could be related to the BSOD problem though? :s

I'm going to leave the mem check running over night!

EDIT: Another strange thing - I can't seem to boot into Safe Mode with Networking anymore... it gets to loading CLASSPNP.SYS and then just stalls!
I can still boot into windows 7 normally though. what could this mean?!

Just update when appropriate then.

Maguscreed said:

Just update when appropriate then.

Click to expand...

Ok well I've ran memtest for over 12 hours, and it got to pass 11 without any errors at all. So I guess this confirms it is a software/driver fault? what should I try next?

There is just so little I can do without a dump file.
...and I can't find anything that will ensure the system creates one.
My only thought at this point is to have another look for the original dump folder while show hidden files and folders is active.

Maguscreed said:

There is just so little I can do without a dump file.
...and I can't find anything that will ensure the system creates one.
My only thought at this point is to have another look for the original dump folder while show hidden files and folders is active.

Click to expand...

Ok well I can't find any dump files anywhere except for the C:\Windows\MEMORY.dmp file. Isn't that what you are talking about? it's increased to 415MB now...

Also, do you know why I got that error when running the perfmon /report command?

I just activated my windows properly.. turns out I used the wrong product key before instead of the one stuck to the bottom of my laptop!

but just got another MEMORY_MANAGEMENT bsod so I think the activation problems were unrelated.
I tried using WhoCrashed which says it looks in C:\Windows\Minidump (the empty folder :s) and it gave this report:

[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Crash dump directory: C:\Windows\Minidump[/FONT]

[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial][FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Crash dumps are enabled on your computer.
[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]On Tue 08/03/2011 18:26:33 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Unknown[/FONT] (0x00000000)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x31, 0xFFFFFA8006084740, 0xFFFFF8800EEF5000, 0xFFFFF8A003665ACB)
Error: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]MEMORY_MANAGEMENT[/FONT]
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: Unknown .
Google query: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Unknown MEMORY_MANAGEMENT


Not sure if that helps!
[/FONT]

[/FONT]

fadax said:

I just activated my windows properly.. turns out I used the wrong product key before instead of the one stuck to the bottom of my laptop!

but just got another MEMORY_MANAGEMENT bsod so I think the activation problems were unrelated.
I tried using WhoCrashed which says it looks in C:\Windows\Minidump (the empty folder :s) and it gave this report:

[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Crash dump directory: C:\Windows\Minidump[/FONT]

[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial][FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Crash dumps are enabled on your computer.
[/FONT][/FONT]

[FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]On Tue 08/03/2011 18:26:33 GMT your computer crashed
crash dump file: C:\Windows\memory.dmp
This was probably caused by the following module: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Unknown[/FONT] (0x00000000)
Bugcheck code: 0x1A (0x31, 0xFFFFFA8006084740, 0xFFFFF8800EEF5000, 0xFFFFF8A003665ACB)
Error: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]MEMORY_MANAGEMENT[/FONT]
Bug check description: This indicates that a severe memory management error occurred.
This might be a case of memory corruption. More often memory corruption happens because of software errors in buggy drivers, not because of faulty RAM modules.
A third party driver was identified as the probable root cause of this system error. It is suggested you look for an update for the following driver: Unknown .
Google query: [FONT=Segoe UI, Arial]Unknown MEMORY_MANAGEMENT


Not sure if that helps!
[/FONT]

[/FONT]

Click to expand...

Upload the dumps
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/83172-dump-files-upload-seven-forums.html

yowanvista said:

Upload the dumps
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/83172-dump-files-upload-seven-forums.html

Click to expand...

If you haven't been following for some reason his machine doesn't seem to be creating them.

Maguscreed said:

yowanvista said:

Upload the dumps
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/83172-dump-files-upload-seven-forums.html

Click to expand...

If you haven't been following for some reason his machine doesn't seem to be creating them.

Click to expand...

The WhoCrashed Log above indicates that memory dumps are present

just make sure the .dmp files are set as small

to setup minidumps and stop the auto restart ...............
Go to Start and type in sysdm.cpl and press Enter
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on the Startup and Recovery Settings button
Ensure that Automatically restart is unchecked
Under the Write Debugging Information header select Small memory dump (256 kB) in the dropdown box
Ensure that the Small Dump Directory is listed as %systemroot%\Minidump << where your .dmp files can be found later
Click OK twice to exit the dialogs, then reboot for the changes to take effect.

ickymay said:

just make sure the .dmp files are set as small

to setup minidumps and stop the auto restart ...............
Go to Start and type in sysdm.cpl and press Enter
Click on the Advanced tab
Click on the Startup and Recovery Settings button
Ensure that Automatically restart is unchecked
Under the Write Debugging Information header select Small memory dump (256 kB) in the dropdown box
Ensure that the Small Dump Directory is listed as %systemroot%\Minidump << where your .dmp files can be found later
Click OK twice to exit the dialogs, then reboot for the changes to take effect.

Click to expand...

ahh ok thanks, I've done that now.

So after the next crash I'll upload the minidump. Can't really upload the 415MB file!

Right well now that I want it to crash, I'm not actually getting any crashes!

I've had some other strange problems though - last time I restarted it said that my disk needed to be checked for consistency and it ran chkdsk and found a few corrupt files.

Also I used windows update to download a couple of updates just now and when I tried to install them I got error code 8000FFF, which a google search told me could be due to corrupted update files :s

and I can't start firefox anymore. I click the icon and it just crashes and submits a report to mozilla instantly every time!

Edit: Now that I've restarted firefox is working again...

Another strange thing..

I ran an installer which I downloaded a couple of days ago, and half way through the self extraction it said it was a corrupt archive and couldn't complete the extraction.

I restarted the laptop and tried again and it extracted and installed fine with no problems...

How can that happen?!